


The things about you I appreciate may seem indelicate

by knitmeapony



Category: Valentine (2008)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 21:46:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knitmeapony/pseuds/knitmeapony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray and Grace, regretting everything through the years, and everything that's come between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The things about you I appreciate may seem indelicate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mizzelle (wabbitseason)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wabbitseason/gifts).



> Includes snips from the poem Valentine by John Fuller, http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/valentine/
> 
> I'd never heard of this series until I got this assignment. Thanks for introducing me to some delicious crack.

Courting amongst the gods was always complicated. There used to be elaborate systems of working out who was appropriate for whom and what was appropriate for which. You mortals believe that deciding who pays the dinner bill is difficult; you don't have the faintest clue what difficult really is.

At least if _you_ make a mistake it doesn't lead to a couple centuries of messy spitting and sputtering. A cold shoulder from one to another on Olympus can lead to famine or fire. Wars have been started for less. So everything plays out on a very strict little set of rules.

Of course no one pays attention to the rules, but at least everyone makes a show of _trying_ in public.

Everyone, of course, but the one who _wrote_ the rules. _Rules_, she would like to remind you, are for other people.

## Aphrodite

  
_I like the hair upon your shoulders,  
Falling like water over boulders.  
_

It wasn't like her to be fickle, honestly. The reason most of her rules were based on _one_ \-- one date at a time, one courtship, one marriage -- was that was the way she liked it. Love required focus. Love required care and caution and sacrifice. But she was young, and it wasn't love until you committed.

There were so many to choose from, and they all courted her, one after another. There was music and art and poetry, treasures by the score, and they were lovely. God's don't bring garbage, after all. What she really liked most of all, though, was the attention. She was young, and they were flattering, and gods are impressive even when you are one.

Still, even _they_ blended together after a time, all except one.

A little man who gave her odd looks when he crossed her in the halls, and always had black smudges on his jaw and burns on his hands. Hephaestus, that was his name -- she really couldn't be asked to remember most of the time, so she sweetly called him 'cousin' when she caught him staring.

It wasn't until Zeus, that useless pushy prat, started pressuring her to make her decision that he finally spoke to her. To his credit, he'd washed his face and hands and put on something marginally clean before he approached her. Still, it took three days of asking and insisting before she finally made time to go see whatever-it-was that he insisted was worth her time.

She was never sure what made her finally go. Perhaps his insistence. Perhaps the sad look in his eye when she said no. Perhaps it was as silly as the idea that he washed his face every time he came to her. All she really knew is that she'd look back and know that waiting was the first thing she'd ever regret.

## Arate of Cyrene

_I like the shoulders, too: they are essential.  
Your collar-bones have great potential_

Most of the gods didn't have friends amongst the mortals. What was the point, after all, in the long run? But Aphrodite, she had a connection to the mortals beyond even most of the demigods. Whatever was fleeting about them was fleeting about love, and being so young and so separated from her sisters she found herself frequently going down to the cities, making friends before revealing her face.

Arate was one of her dearest -- beautiful as Helen ever was, clever as Socrates, and as sweet-tongued as Homer. She lived alone, writing her poetry and her philosophy, and her door always opened wide when a friend turned up on her doorstep. Like today.

Aphrodite was all but sobbing, telling her the terrible story of how that dreadful Ares had grown angry with Hephaestus over some foolish weapon and had burned _her_ house down in a fit of pique. As if she'd done anything to him, as if she were not a woman separate entire from her husband, as if that house were not in her realm. And what could she do of it? Little.

"Are you all right? Is Hephaestus well?"

"I won't take comfort that he waited for us to leave."

"That isn't what I mean." Arate pressed a cup of hot milk and honey into her hands and stroked her hair. "My friend, why are you here? Where is your husband?"

It wasn't until then that she'd even thought of it. "Picking up the pieces."

And she'd left him there, alone, in his failure. Perhaps that was her second regret.

## Aglaonike

_I like your eyes, I like their fringes.  
The way they focus on me gives me twinges.  
Your upper arms drive me berserk.  
I like the way your elbows work, on hinges._

It wasn't so often that someone as simple as a witch was allowed into the home of a god; Hephaestus had not only allowed it, he'd invited her in. Once. And again. And sweetly.

He watched from the bed as she puttered about the room. Her hands roamed over the tools scattered about the workbench built into the wall, expertly putting them through their paces -- the ones her hands were strong enough to move, at least. One beautiful thing about witches, he had found, is that they aren't afraid to get dirty. A bit of grease on her hand, and she just absently rubbed her fingers together as she moved on.

Ever practical, this one. It was what had drawn him to her. In her village, they said she was always drawing down the moon, but in truth she was an astronomer of the highest order, able to calculate the way the moon moved and predict every eclipse to the hour. She had built a beautiful, elaborate machine to predict them and left it at one of his temples.

She paused in front of the fireplace, examining the paintings there. The glow of her skin as she stood nude before the fire was too much to resist, and he rolled from under the blankets to meet her there, wrap an arm around her waist and taste the skin of her shoulder and throat as she stared.

"Odd that you'd have Hades on your wall." He laughed and ran a thumb along her hip. "To you he may be Death itself; to me he's just family. And family that doesn't irritate me, at that."

She smiled and turned a little into his kisses. "Is that Persephone next to him?"

He hesitated. "Aphrodite."

"Your wife." She tilted her head to examine his face; he didn't bring his eyes up to meet hers. "It seems odd that you'd keep her in the room where you bring your mistresses."

"Ex-wife," he said, quietly. He hadn't argued when she'd asked for the divorce.

That may have been his first regret.

## Mary Hebraea

_I like your wrists, I like your glands,  
I like the fingers on your hands._

Mary was everyone's favorite; blessed by nearly every god and goddess she set her mind to worship. Dionysus was still delighted with her gift of the tribikos -- wine was lovely, but distilled spirits put him in a whole new frame of mind. He was the one that had brought her to Vulcan's attention.

"You gotta see this woman," he said from the happy heap he made propped up on the fence by one arm and sheer will. "I mean, she's no beauty, but her hands, man. Her hands. The things she can do."

Vulcan had been needlessly banging away on his anvil, trying to drive home the point that there were many things he did not want to discuss and that women were on the top of the list. It didn't work -- even a direct 'go away' wouldn't work with the drunken bastard -- so he sighed and put down the hammer.

"Hestia said she's not exactly my type."

"Hestia's a shrew." He twisted around and put his legs up on the fence with a laugh. "Mary's everyone's type. She's fun, she's weird, and she thinks we're all some kind of vision brought on from inhaling too much sulfur."

"Hestia's right." He picked up the hammer again. "I'm not into fun."

He tuned out his brother's nattering and worked on hammering the copper under his hands. Short strokes, delicately patterned. It took his mind off things, enough that he didn't notice someone else had joined them until the piece was done, and he had lifted it up to examine it.

A feminine laugh cut through his consciousness, and he grimaced. "Damn it, Dio, I don't have time for a useless..." he turned and saw her; every inch of her what he'd been dreaming of nights, and steeling himself to go see in days. ".. woman." Venus, in some god forsaken filmy nonsense, looking for all the world like she'd just risen from a bath.

Who _wears_ that sort of thing out of doors?

It was enough that he was struck speechless, even though he saw the fire up inside her, and the spark and crackle of anger around her eyes.

"Well. I'm glad to know how I'm thought of," she said, with a grit of her teeth, and she flounced away leaving only the smell of jasmine and vetiver in her wake.

Dio stared at him, and then at her. "... you gotta go after her, man."

He hesitated. He wanted to. He wanted her to never think that he thought anything but the best of her. He wanted her to know that he loved her. But shouldn't she know? Wasn't that her business? He picked up the hammer and felt the weight in his stomach as well as his hand.

"She'll work it out."

Not going after her, that was his second regret.

Taking so long to work it out, that was her third.

##  Shi Dun 

_I like it when you tilt your cheek up.  
I like the way you nod and hold a teacup. I like your legs when you unwind them.  
Even in trousers I don't mind them._

He'd run away so far that it took her some years to find him; he was building a second palace, one not as grand as hers but beautiful none the less. She was instantly jealous.

"Who is she?" He turned and saw her spinning up the hall, furious and miserable, all in red and orange. A flame alight. He didn't have the strength to be angry in return.

"An Empress. A poet. You'd like her," he said quietly, picking up another thin panel of wood and fitting it up to the wall. "This isn't meant as a slight against you, Venus."

"Archela." She paced the room like a caged creature, unable to sit still, just this side of throwing something at his head. "Do you have any idea how embarrassing this is? How horrible this could be for me? This was my bride price. The greatest gift of love to love herself."

"Twice," he noted, dipping a cloth in oil to begin working on polishing the thin panel. Small strokes, and quick ones. "In the building and the destruction both, wasn't it? An expensive price both ways."

"Oh, don't you be vile. Don't you dare be vile to me." She came right up next to him, so close he could feel the heat from her flushed cheeks and the brush of her hair on his bare shoulder. "That isn't my fault. It isn't my way. You know he insisted."

He wouldn't look at her. "Yes, of course. He insisted. It isn't at all because you fell in love with a palace first and a man second." He smiled, very brittle and raw. "Why did you marry me? There are plenty of mortals who would have worshiped you just as well. You didn't need me."

That took some of the wind out of her sails; she stepped back with the back of her wrist pressed to her mouth. "Is that what you think? How little you think of me." She took a breath and dropped her hand. She'd come here not to argue, but to try to ask him for help; what a fine and miserable start she'd had.

"I loved you. Not the palace, not the toys, not the filigree inlays, _you_. I married for love. I will only ever marry for love. That is _my_ due as a goddess." She stepped back and away. "I was young, Vulcan. Hephaestus. Love." She watched his hand for any tremor or tremble as it worked the oil into the wood. Short circles, smooth motions. "Ares was a flirtation. I didn't know he'd take it so far." Her own hand shook, just a little, as she smoothed her hair, set herself to rights.

He turned, just a little. "You're not happy."

"Of course I'm not. I love him, of course, in a way, but as a second. Never as a first. Never as an only."

He upset the pot of oil as he moved for her, driving her in a flustered path across the room until she was solidly against the outside wall, just next to the door she felt certain she would be thrown out of in a moment. "And me? Archela. Aphrodite. Do you want to come home?"

Her hands came up to his face.

"Please."

They only just got the door shut; there was no furniture in the room but they made do.

And later, when he was pressing kisses to her welcoming lips while he helped her dress, she promised, over and over, that she'd ask Ares for a divorce. That she'd send for him the moment it was done.

Believing her was his third regret.

## Hypatia

_I'd like to cross two hemispheres and have you chase me.  
I'd like to smuggle you across frontiers  
Or sail with you at night into Tangiers.  
I'd like you to embrace me._

There were a few weeks after Eros was born that she wouldn't leave home; it was just too much to bear. It was another sort of love, one that she knew existed but that she'd never experienced herself. It was like a wave of fresh energy, the first heat in spring, and she adored it and adored him and spent all her time fussing.

But in time, she needed to go out, and she brought him with her wherever she went. To see her siblings, her cousins, the family she thought would welcome her. And then she went out into the world, to say hello to the mortals that she adored, the ones who worshiped her with her due and gave back to the world with beauty.

Hypatia was the first on her list; she didn't bother sending word, just came down and rapped on her door and swept into her home, all flush and joy and was welcomed with equal enthusiasm. They shared wine and bread and honey and swapped stories, and Hypatia fussed over Eros just the right amount -- enough that Venus felt her son was given his due, but not so much that she felt neglected.

"And what does his father think of him?"

"He hasn't been home, yet." She kept up her usual cheer. "You know how it is these days, always another war to oversee. I'm sure he'll be home soon." Though not in any rush. She knew that well enough.

It wasn't until hours later, when Venus was finally beginning to make her goodbyes, that she heard a door open and close, and she blinked and tipped her head to her friend. "I didn't know you had a visitor! I'm terribly sorry I've kept you from her for so long."

There was the slightest of hesitations. "I didn't think he'd be back so soon," Hypatia admitted. "I wouldn't worry about it."

"He? Well. I'll certainly leave the two of you alone." She bent to sweep her son into her arms and kiss Hypatia's cheek in the same motion. "Have a little fun in my name, won't you?"

She glided out the door and turned to wave goodbye and saw Hypatia's visitor through the window.

Froze, smile slowly contorting into something ugly.

She never returned.

That she lost a friend, that she never went to ask him when he'd gotten home, that was her next regret.

## Hildegard of Bingen

  
_I'd like you even if you were malign  
And had a yen for sudden homicide.  
I'd let you put insecticide into my wine._

Neither one of them ever met Hildegard, not directly. Athena loved her, of course, and Apollo in his way, but they never shared her until she was long dead. It wasn't until long after that, a good few centuries later, they each found her music, separately but identically.

It was a different god that she was praising, but the music was so beautiful, so sweet and clarion, that everyone, every pantheon, when they heard it they felt bolstered somehow. It became a little game to see where they could have it played, and by whom, and in whose name.

It was entirely by accident that they ended up in the same hall listening to the same glorious music. He was in the rafters, stretched out on a beam and enjoying the company of a curious mouse; she was in a box seat, and she never was quite sure what made her lift her eyes, but he was looking down at her when she did. She offered a faint little smile, and he offered a broader one.

_Nice dress_, he mouthed, and no one else in the world or any other would have been able to tell that he was laughing. She flushed and gave him a furious look, and that was the end of the music for both of them. He found his way amongst the rigging and the flys, twisting through the works, making her search for him each time she looked up.

Getting closer every time he settled for a few bars.

Just before the end of the performance he disappeared; she twisted and turned in her seat, but it wasn't until they drew the curtains in the back of the box that she realized where he'd gone. She excused herself from her companions and followed him back stage, twisting through the costumes and the velvet draping until she found him.

"You," she told him with a laugh, "are an absolute bastard."

He just smirked that quiet half-smile of his. "I don't know what you mean," he said, innocently. "I was just keeping the show running. Who doesn't like the Ordo Virtutum, after all?"

She smacked his arm with her fan but she was still smiling. "It's been ages."

His smile flickered and dimmed just a little. "Since your son was born."

And then she remembered how that had ended, and she closed her eyes, retreating just a little. "I'm sorry that we don't... I miss you," she admitted.

His eyes were quiet, and he watched her for a long moment. "I live here, you know. Do you have a moment to have a drink?"

"I don't." She bit her lip at the way his expression fell, just a little. "You've forgiven me, haven't you?"

"Some of it. Eros, he's a good kid. I can see... well." He wiped his hands on his shirt, and she couldn't bear it.

It had been too long, and too long before that, and she _missed_ him, more than she could say. She stepped in and cupped his face and kissed him, breathless and hard and fast, and stepped away again just as swiftly. "I'll come visit you. Next week. Look for me."

And he'd been planning to move on, after the performance, but she was gone too quickly to say.

Staying for her visit, getting his hopes up, that was his next regret.

## Mary Shelley

  
_I'd even like you if you were the Bride of Frankenstein  
Or something ghoulish out of Mamoulian's Jekyll and Hyde.  
I'd even like you as my Julian of Norwich or Cathleen ni Houlihan_

"Science isn't pretty," she told her as they lay twined around each other, dozing in the golden sun and sharing war stories. "It's fitting that he's the god of fire as well; it's a bit like that. You think it's lovely from a distance, flickering and flitting and dancing, but then you get up close and you see what it can do. It can burn you. Cut you. Scald you."

Mary considered this for a long moment, piecing it together slowly. Letting things slide into place. "Is that why you left him?" She turned, her curls ghosting against Lilith's skin. "Vulcan, I mean. You married him, after all; you must not have minded the lame leg or the ill temper or any of it. Did you think better of it?"

Lilith's eyes froze over, but she managed not to tense. "It wasn't that, no. Not at all. I fell in love again, that's all, and I was so young -- even goddesses are young once, you know -- I was so young I didn't know what it meant. And I was always so fond of him. I never wanted him to be miserable, you know. I think I thought that staying married to a woman who loved another would have made him that way."

The smile she cast her lover was full of regret. "Good intentions are never enough, you know. You might start with the cleanest of hearts, the most unburdened of souls, but you can still put a foot wrong so easily. Especially in love, especially when you think you're doing what's best."

Mary didn't answer, but her fingers drummed a gentle tattoo on Lilith's thigh, a sure sign that it'd brought some kind of thought to the surface. "Did I ever tell you about the dream I had last year? Late, when we had that absinthe and wine."

And glad for the change of subject, Lilith hummed and hmmed and nodded her way through the long story of the dream, her mind elsewhere. Back to a theater, and the feel of velvet under her cheek, and the way that he was so very like fire.

And leaving that night, that was another regret.

##  Ada Lovelace

  
_How melodramatic  
If you were something muttering in attics  
Like Mrs Rochester or a student of boolean mathematics.  
_

"Love isn't pretty," he shrugged a little as he skimmed through Ada's latest, smiling at a note here and there, adding a note of his own in the margins. "Her animal is the swan, you know. It's appropriate. They're lovely out there in the world, sailing in the water, resting on the shore. But get too close and they're real bastards."

Charles had always been one of his favorite mortals, so when he asked if the goodly Master Smith would care for another pupil, he'd taken him up on the offer. And he was glad for it; Ada was clever, witty, charming. It made him wish he'd had a daughter.

She chewed her nail as she watched him read. "Is that why you let her go? Venus, I mean." His head snapped up and he fixed her with a look, but she'd long since stopped being frightened by him. "Did you think better of it? Was it not worth the risk?"

He sighed and put the papers down. "No. I used to tell myself it was Ares, that I let her go to keep a war from brewing. You might have noticed I'm not really built for a fight." He offered a wry smile and she grinned in return.

"But it's not so," she prompted, "is it?"

"No." He picked up the papers again but he wasn't looking at them. "I think I let her go because she asked. Just that. They say that no matter how a man thinks he heads a family, if he loves his wife he will deny her nothing. I think it goes beyond marriage. Even today, if she said the word..."

Ada fixed him with a look of her own. "Does she know you still love her?" His silence was answer enough. "Don't you think that you should _tell_ her?" She was so young and so sincere he couldn't even begin to be angry. He waved a hand at her.

"Drink your tea," he said with a sigh. "It's getting cold."

And not following advice, that was his next regret.

## Grace

  
_I'd like you in my confidence.  
I'd like to be your second look.  
I'd like to let you try the French Defence and mate you with my rook.  
I'd like to be your preference and hence  
I'd like to be around when you unhook.  
I'd like to be your only audience,  
The final name in your appointment book, your future tense. _

He had never admitted it, but she knew he came the first time because of Hercules. Not that the dear man had done or said anything directly, but he'd made it known to any and all that Grace had saved him. Taken him in at his lowest, and given him direction, made him whole again.

He was right in the middle of the industrial revolution that should have been the greatest joy he'd had in a millennium. Somehow, though, he'd found himself miserable, grinding through every day, meeting brilliant mind after brilliant mind. He watched them discovering so many new and glorious things without a scrap of pleasure.

It was the wrong time to be stepping back into the world. It was too much too fast. It reminded him for the first time in centuries that these lives were pitifully short and that this one discovery would be their all. So he came to her without a word, turned up on her doorstep and moved into the pool house without really asking. She didn't object, of course. She was delighted.

Once again, she had a strange little man giving her odd looks in the halls, smudged with smoke and ash and bootblack and worse. When he started talking to her again, she paid every bit of attention that she could. He built her a safe, a clock, a tiny golden bird with a winding key, and she loved every one and told him so. She laughed at his quiet jokes and loved that he looked startled when he realized she was sincere.

She'd learned to temper her regrets with new action.

It brought him back, this attention. And as the years rolled on, his shoulders squared again. He still insisted he was retired but he kept creating, and in time he found a place of his own, a workshop worthy of his talents, a sprawling warehouse of a space with a forge and anvil, a press and a door that could be flung wide to bring in lumber or pass out grand works. He put his regrets behind him. He found a peace.

It wasn't until after he moved out that he finally took a breath and took the next chance and kissed her.

And waiting so long, that was his next regret.

There was always one more regret.


End file.
